dwalber’s review published on Letterboxd:
By the time you walk out the theater it certainly feels irredeemably misogynist, but the more you think about it the more complicated it becomes. The way that Yamatoya collapses masculinity and shows all of his male gangster characters to be ruined by the same combination of violence and ego is fascinating and compelling. Whether his collapsing of all the women into sex dolls is a critique of the men or an honest piece of frustrating sexism is hard to parse. It's likely somewhere in between, though I think I need to see it again before having that conversation.
Beyond that, this is an extremely impressive piece of filmmaking. Defiantly avant-garde, especially in the context of the pink film audience, it's bewildering and surprising the whole way through. One particular cut, from a loaded gun to an ocean, the waves suddenly taking the place of the expected gunshot, is a marvel of philosophical brutality. Yamashita's score is luridly unsettling. The whole film is luridly unsettling, actually.